Before I came here I had heard reports that Chinese was the worlds hardest language. Is there any truth to this statement? A bit but then not really. Let me explain.
Unlike English and many other European languages that have letters and a one to one (roughly) sound to letter ratio. Chinese has these annoying things called characters. Each character represents one syllable of sound. Sometimes this is a word in and of itself. Sometimes it is part of a multisyllabic and multi character word. Although there are 1,000s and 1,000s of these things there is somewhat of an ordering system behind them. They have these things called radicals which occur in every character. Sometimes they are extremely logical and denote a group of words to which the character belongs. E.g. the water radical shui 水 can be found in many similar words such as bing 冰 (ice) he 河 (river) hai 海 (ocean) liu流 (to flow) ke 渴 (thirsty) etcc. Similarly the the radical yan 言 which means language can be found in shuo 說 (to speak) jiang 講 (to talk) yu 語 (language) and many others which I can't think of at the moment. Although these are some of the best examples and some don't really seem to follow much logic. They also have these things that are occassionally in characters called phonetics which means that often two characters with the same phonetic will either sound the same, have the same pronunciation but different tones or sometimes losely rhyme.
So this system is rather difficult to learn and you have no dependable way to determine what a character means by looking at its radical and phonetic (its even difficult to determine which is which) nor can you guess how to write by knowing a characters meaning and it's pronunciation. So it is quite hard to become literate as you have to remember what the pronunciation is for so many of these damn things. You will often know how to say a character but come across one in a text that you have studied before but have now completely forgotten how to say. Once you get off the ground I'm assured it isn't really that hard. We rarely as adults read words by pronouncing all the letters it would take forever. We learn to recognise shapes and predict what will come next by context. So it is to in Chinese that when you have been studying for long enough it no longer matters that they lack an alphabet as readers of that level aren't decoding text that way anyway.
But for learners its a bitch. Don't even get me started on learning to write as that is even more arduous a complete case of repetition and hours of pratice. So becoming literate in Chinese apart from learning to speak it is mostly what gives it its reputation as one of the worlds hardest languages. From a literacy standpoint I'm sure it is.
Now to speaking. The next difficult thing about Chinese for a non native speaker and for most of the world is it has these annoying things called tones. Now tones are applied to every word and there are four of them. The first is said high and light. The seconds rises like we say a question. The third starts low goes downward then briefly dips up and the fourth drops straight into the ground. The problem is we as speakers in English change our intonation all the time but it doesn't change the meaning of a word. Its usually used to express feeling or emotion or for emphasis. So many of these single syllable words can mean any number of things depending on your tone. As can a few double syllable words. Now if you take away the tones Chinese isn't a very phonectically rich lamguage. I can't remember where I read this but if you take away tones Chinese has a total of 400 different ways to say a syllable. This sounds like quite a lot but English apparently has 4,000 Even if you count tones I'm sure that means Chinese has a grand total of 1,600 sounds per syllable.
So the first problem is we can't really hear tones when we first start. If we can hear the difference we need to be really concentrating it isn't something we can notice in the middle of a conversation whilst trying to put together meaning. So when you first start out all the words you learnt sound like a lot of words you hear in conversation the only problem is they don't make any sense in the place. So you won't be able to pick up everything but you can take a guess and say 'I think I heard horse in there' they must be talking about horses. Well no you see 馬 ma3 is third tone they were talking about their mother 媽 ma1 or asking a question 嗎 ma or talking about scolding someone 罵 ma4. So when you first learn guessing for the jist of a conversation based on what you think you know is hard. It's easier when you get better as not only do you pick up the tones but you learn enough words and grammar to understand when each word could possibly be each word and when it couldn't be because it doesn't make sense. There are rarely cross overs where similar sounding words could be either one because of the surrounding words. The same way we can tell the difference between where and wear in conversation. I wear a shirt vs where is he? You understand by the sentence and surrounding words.
Seccondly the major problems with tones is pronunciation. We can't hit the tones properly. First tone and fourth tone are relatively straight forward. But second and third tone can be quite difficult for us to tell apart. We think we are saying second but really it is third. Even once you have learned to say all the tones accurately on command it still is quite difficult for your untrained voice box to bounce up and down and around trying to get a sentence out at normal speed. What's more tones are always the first aspect of pronunciation we forget. So a word I haven't said in a while I will remember the other aspects of its pronunciation but will always quickly forget the tones.
So how important are tones? Quite important. If you walk up to someone and say 'hello my name is....' they will probably be able to guess what you are saying by the context just like a foreigner who says to you 'hurro me nim ish....' The words alone aren't enough to guess but in a sentence you understand. However when you get the tones for something more complicated that the listener wasn't expecting you to say wrong they will look at you with a blank face 90% of the time completely unable to understand what you are trying to say. Try a few different combinations of tone and they will suddenly recognise what you are trying to say.
So pronunciation is hard and reading and writing kind of suck balls. Can we label it worlds hardest language yet?
Not so fast. Some things are refreshingly easy about Chinese that only become aparent when you try teaching the rules of English on the side. Chinese grammar although very different to our own is quite simple.
Which gets me to my second point: ENGLISH GRAMMAR IS SHIT
In English for example we say I am, he/ she/ it is, we/you/ they are. These three words are three different expressions of the same meaning 'to be.' This is something that requires hours and hours of drilling into the kids heads when they start learning. There is no rational reason why would should have three words when one will suffice just nicely. Also is the present simple tense (talking about things that happen regularly or all the time) we say I/ we/ you/ they do but he/ she / it does. Extra s's for no real reason that don't need to be there. But when we ask a question or say a negative we say 'Does he do?' and 'he doesn't do' so the s comes off the main verb and on to the 'helping verb.' Of course this is natural to us native speakers who have been speaking the language forever but for kids it requires hours and hours of drilling to get correct.
Then there is the world of verbs. Regular verbs are fine. To change a regular verb into the past simple tense or present perfect you just add -ed. Nice and simple. For example I jump. I jumped yesterday. I have jumped. But then they have these things called irregular verbs which requires you to learn two new verbs and two new spellings most of the time. The problem is its for almost all of the most commonly used verbs. You see for children even in English it is intuitive to say I go. I 'goed' yesterday. Simple copying of a pattern. But you aren't allowed you see, 'goed' isn't a word. We say 'I went yesterday' and 'I have gone.'
Unlike English and many other European languages that have letters and a one to one (roughly) sound to letter ratio. Chinese has these annoying things called characters. Each character represents one syllable of sound. Sometimes this is a word in and of itself. Sometimes it is part of a multisyllabic and multi character word. Although there are 1,000s and 1,000s of these things there is somewhat of an ordering system behind them. They have these things called radicals which occur in every character. Sometimes they are extremely logical and denote a group of words to which the character belongs. E.g. the water radical shui 水 can be found in many similar words such as bing 冰 (ice) he 河 (river) hai 海 (ocean) liu流 (to flow) ke 渴 (thirsty) etcc. Similarly the the radical yan 言 which means language can be found in shuo 說 (to speak) jiang 講 (to talk) yu 語 (language) and many others which I can't think of at the moment. Although these are some of the best examples and some don't really seem to follow much logic. They also have these things that are occassionally in characters called phonetics which means that often two characters with the same phonetic will either sound the same, have the same pronunciation but different tones or sometimes losely rhyme.
So this system is rather difficult to learn and you have no dependable way to determine what a character means by looking at its radical and phonetic (its even difficult to determine which is which) nor can you guess how to write by knowing a characters meaning and it's pronunciation. So it is quite hard to become literate as you have to remember what the pronunciation is for so many of these damn things. You will often know how to say a character but come across one in a text that you have studied before but have now completely forgotten how to say. Once you get off the ground I'm assured it isn't really that hard. We rarely as adults read words by pronouncing all the letters it would take forever. We learn to recognise shapes and predict what will come next by context. So it is to in Chinese that when you have been studying for long enough it no longer matters that they lack an alphabet as readers of that level aren't decoding text that way anyway.
But for learners its a bitch. Don't even get me started on learning to write as that is even more arduous a complete case of repetition and hours of pratice. So becoming literate in Chinese apart from learning to speak it is mostly what gives it its reputation as one of the worlds hardest languages. From a literacy standpoint I'm sure it is.
Now to speaking. The next difficult thing about Chinese for a non native speaker and for most of the world is it has these annoying things called tones. Now tones are applied to every word and there are four of them. The first is said high and light. The seconds rises like we say a question. The third starts low goes downward then briefly dips up and the fourth drops straight into the ground. The problem is we as speakers in English change our intonation all the time but it doesn't change the meaning of a word. Its usually used to express feeling or emotion or for emphasis. So many of these single syllable words can mean any number of things depending on your tone. As can a few double syllable words. Now if you take away the tones Chinese isn't a very phonectically rich lamguage. I can't remember where I read this but if you take away tones Chinese has a total of 400 different ways to say a syllable. This sounds like quite a lot but English apparently has 4,000 Even if you count tones I'm sure that means Chinese has a grand total of 1,600 sounds per syllable.
So the first problem is we can't really hear tones when we first start. If we can hear the difference we need to be really concentrating it isn't something we can notice in the middle of a conversation whilst trying to put together meaning. So when you first start out all the words you learnt sound like a lot of words you hear in conversation the only problem is they don't make any sense in the place. So you won't be able to pick up everything but you can take a guess and say 'I think I heard horse in there' they must be talking about horses. Well no you see 馬 ma3 is third tone they were talking about their mother 媽 ma1 or asking a question 嗎 ma or talking about scolding someone 罵 ma4. So when you first learn guessing for the jist of a conversation based on what you think you know is hard. It's easier when you get better as not only do you pick up the tones but you learn enough words and grammar to understand when each word could possibly be each word and when it couldn't be because it doesn't make sense. There are rarely cross overs where similar sounding words could be either one because of the surrounding words. The same way we can tell the difference between where and wear in conversation. I wear a shirt vs where is he? You understand by the sentence and surrounding words.
Seccondly the major problems with tones is pronunciation. We can't hit the tones properly. First tone and fourth tone are relatively straight forward. But second and third tone can be quite difficult for us to tell apart. We think we are saying second but really it is third. Even once you have learned to say all the tones accurately on command it still is quite difficult for your untrained voice box to bounce up and down and around trying to get a sentence out at normal speed. What's more tones are always the first aspect of pronunciation we forget. So a word I haven't said in a while I will remember the other aspects of its pronunciation but will always quickly forget the tones.
So how important are tones? Quite important. If you walk up to someone and say 'hello my name is....' they will probably be able to guess what you are saying by the context just like a foreigner who says to you 'hurro me nim ish....' The words alone aren't enough to guess but in a sentence you understand. However when you get the tones for something more complicated that the listener wasn't expecting you to say wrong they will look at you with a blank face 90% of the time completely unable to understand what you are trying to say. Try a few different combinations of tone and they will suddenly recognise what you are trying to say.
So pronunciation is hard and reading and writing kind of suck balls. Can we label it worlds hardest language yet?
Not so fast. Some things are refreshingly easy about Chinese that only become aparent when you try teaching the rules of English on the side. Chinese grammar although very different to our own is quite simple.
Which gets me to my second point: ENGLISH GRAMMAR IS SHIT
In English for example we say I am, he/ she/ it is, we/you/ they are. These three words are three different expressions of the same meaning 'to be.' This is something that requires hours and hours of drilling into the kids heads when they start learning. There is no rational reason why would should have three words when one will suffice just nicely. Also is the present simple tense (talking about things that happen regularly or all the time) we say I/ we/ you/ they do but he/ she / it does. Extra s's for no real reason that don't need to be there. But when we ask a question or say a negative we say 'Does he do?' and 'he doesn't do' so the s comes off the main verb and on to the 'helping verb.' Of course this is natural to us native speakers who have been speaking the language forever but for kids it requires hours and hours of drilling to get correct.
Then there is the world of verbs. Regular verbs are fine. To change a regular verb into the past simple tense or present perfect you just add -ed. Nice and simple. For example I jump. I jumped yesterday. I have jumped. But then they have these things called irregular verbs which requires you to learn two new verbs and two new spellings most of the time. The problem is its for almost all of the most commonly used verbs. You see for children even in English it is intuitive to say I go. I 'goed' yesterday. Simple copying of a pattern. But you aren't allowed you see, 'goed' isn't a word. We say 'I went yesterday' and 'I have gone.'
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